


Lex's Intern

by EntreNous



Category: Smallville
Genre: Clark's a Terrible Intern, Coffee, Crack, Fluff, M/M, Mentors, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-07
Updated: 2005-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-27 03:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/657319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EntreNous/pseuds/EntreNous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark just may be the best and worst intern that Lex has ever had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lex's Intern

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [slashfest](http://slashfest.livejournal.com/) for the prompt "Clark's first job. . . as Lex's intern."

“Clark,” Lex said. He nodded by way of welcome as Clark fairly hurtled into his office, large brown paper bag clutched with both hands.

Today was the first day of Clark’s internship. Well, to be precise, it was the start of his internship with the Smallville division of Luthercorp, Executive Department, Administrative Team, Intern Staff Liaison to the Chief Executive. To be even more precise, Clark was Lex’s intern for six weeks. Thirty business days. Two-hundred and ten hours. Twelve thousand six hundred minutes. Seven hundred fifty-six thousand seconds. Starting now.

“You’re early,” Lex noted. “Good.”

“Oh, I’m usually early,” Clark said earnestly. He flashed a smile at Lex, and then approached the desk. “Okay if I . . .”

“By all means,” Lex said, peering at the bag Clark held.

Sometime in the spring Clark had happened to mention that he would get extra credit for his fall business class at Smallville High if he could land an internship with a company for the space of six weeks. At the end of his time working, he would write a report on the tasks he had performed and the skills he had learned. Naturally, Lex had felt Clark was best off working under him rather than with some random company that had no inkling of Clark’s potential and for some buffoon of a junior manager who would only stifle Clark’s abilities.

The only hindrance to this excellent plan had been Jonathan Kent’s wariness when Clark had surprised his parents with the good news about Lex’s offer. But with Lex present for dinner, Jonathan couldn’t very well be as vocal about his dislike of Lex as he would perhaps have liked. And when he learned that Clark would be reimbursed only with a small stipend rather than by some out of proportion reward or gift, he appeared mollified. Martha’s casual mention that if Clark worked for Lex then he could remain living at home rather than temporarily taking up residence in Metropolis had been the clincher for the deal.

Besides, now was a perfect time for Lex to bring Clark under his wing and spend time nurturing his instincts and shaping his interests. The last few weeks had been extremely hectic, including an assortment of important meetings, one hostile takeover attempt, one violent break-in to the company’s private files room, and a confrontation with Lex’s father during which Lionel had tried to drug Lex and get him to sign over his stock holdings.

Thank god for August and the much needed vacation time that most of the Luthercorp circle of senior employees would be taking. Lex always looked forward to this period of the summer, when he could catch up on the paperwork of the quarter, turn his attention to the minutiae of running a business, and consider how best he could deploy his resources towards dominating and draining other companies of their ideas and top workers.

In fact, considering how many of his rivals were scheduled for rest and relaxation at Tuscan villas and Caribbean isles, Lex decided that he might as well work from home and have Clark alone to assist him for these six weeks. That way he could fully enjoy Clark’s eagerness and helpful nature, and perhaps even convince him that they ought to eat lunch together daily as well (which would add in about one hundred and eight thousand seconds to their time together).

“So I thought I should bring you coffee,” Clark announced as he set a cardboard tray with its contents of six venti-sized coffee cups on Lex’s previously cleared desk. “Since I am your intern.”

Lex nodded slowly. “And you thought maybe I like to start the day with enough caffeine to rouse a large bear?”

Clark frowned at the assortment, using two fingers to swipe away a stray mocha latte colored drop on the desk. “Well, I wasn’t sure what kind you wanted. I’ve seen you drink a couple of kinds before, and I guess some of the times we’ve had coffee together I wasn’t really paying attention. And then who knows if there’s a different morning coffee or afternoon coffee, or if you drink the same kind of coffee that other people have for breakfast, or what. So I got you six.”

“Well, best to come prepared,” Lex said with a smile, and like sunshine breaking over the horizon of cornfields, Clark’s full lips curved into a brilliant grin.

Lex pulled the tray towards him and sniffed, smelling the richly roasted blend of The Talon mixed with a range of sugary scents -- vanilla, mocha, caramel, raspberry, and something unidentifiable but clearly much too sweet. The combined aroma alone was enough to make Lex’s teeth begin to ache. “Listen, Clark. You really don’t have to get me coffee in the morning.”

“Oh,” Clark said in evident disappointment. “I thought that was one of the main things interns did. That’s what they’re always doing on television.”

Lex laughed. “But I’m actually going to give you some real projects, Clark. Show you how it is I run things here. Of course, there will be the occasional grunt work and undignified faxing and copying, but there’s no need for you to feel like you’re running around like my personal assistant.”

“I pass The Talon on the way here anyway,” Clark said with a shrug. “I don’t mind.” He watched as Lex cautiously picked up one of the containers and took a sip. “See, I thought that was probably the one you’d want,” he said, flashing Lex another bright smile.

“It’s great,” Lex choked out. “Really.”

Clark bounced on the balls of his feet. “Terrific! What should I do first?”

Lex returned his smile with a slight curve of his own lips. “You’ve already done the right thing first.”

“Really?” Clark asked, settling on the chair in front of Lex’s desk. “What’s that?”

“Sucking up to the boss,” Lex said lightly as he made a show of taking another sip of the saccharine concoction.

* * *

“I’m really, really sorry,” Clark blurted out.

“It’s fine, Clark,” Lex said, gingerly touching the machine as though it might potentially explode. In point of fact, it nearly already had -- various warning lights and signals had the deluxe copier lit up like a cluster of blinking neon billboards in Times Square, and the metal casing had been vibrating at a rather alarming speed for the past few minutes.

“Something was stuck,” Clark rushed on. “Like, you know, a paper jam. And it said to remove the paper from the source tray gently. But it wouldn’t come out, even when I opened each of the doors that were marked A and B and C on the manual and that were lit up on the screen. So that’s when I gave it a little . . . pull.”

“A little pull,” Lex repeated. He really wasn’t attempting to echo Clark’s description in sarcastic commentary. Rather, he was trying to reconcile Clark’s little pull with how the upper paper feed tray had twisted itself beyond recognition in such a way that had also caused part of it to melt.

“And then it kept saying it was out of toner,” Clark continued desperately.

“That would explain the piles of powder all over the rug and wall,” Lex offered. He sighed. “Clark, it’s fine. It’s just a machine. I’ll replace it. I’m sure there’s something far better on the market now anyway. Think of it this way -- you did me a favor by putting this thing out of its misery.”

“This machine must have cost thousands of dollars,” Clark protested. “Let me call some of the guys at the vocational part of the high school. Maybe they can take a look at it and repair it for a reduced rate.”

“I’m fairly sure this is past repair,” Lex said as a fizzling sound reached his ears.

“I knew I shouldn’t have programmed it to sort _and_ staple,” Clark said miserably as smoke began to rise from the machine.

* * *

Lex slumped in the large desk chair before reaching for his bottle of mineral water.

These past two weeks with Clark had been . . . well, trying, to say the least. It wasn’t that Clark didn’t display admirable enthusiasm and willingness to undertake whatever Lex asked of him. But what he’d done to the copier was mere fun and games compared to the way he had blown up the fax machine into a glowing fireball (supposedly by some failure to dial nine and then one before the area code) just when Lex absolutely needed to receive coded information from a source. Or the way he had wrenched the espresso maker out of joint when he had been given the job of making coffee in the afternoon the one day Lex had held a small meeting of his closest colleagues.

So Clark had been gradually dissuaded from taking on any administrative task that involved something breakable. That had helped a great deal. Yet then there were the syrupy coffee drinks Clark brought each day to contend with, which Lex hadn’t the heart to tell him were undrinkable with his palate. And the way Clark never seemed to tire even during the normal lags and cycles of the day, always needing more work just when Lex wished to relax and contemplate how he could exploit friends and well-wishers. Not to mention the breakneck speed at which Clark completed the time-killing tasks to which Lex occasionally assigned him when Lex needed a few hours to himself to review files or threaten someone.

All of that was hardly an issue, however, compared with one of the habits that Clark had developed over the past few days. Somehow he had taken to perching on the edge of Lex’s desk when he came in for conversation rather than sitting in the chair like he had always done beforehand. It was incredibly distracting, feeling the heat radiating off of Clark’s body, seeing the depths in those hazel-green eyes fixed on his, watching those lush lips move to form inevitably suggestive phrases like “Lex, is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?”

Which is why he had sent Clark off to pick up a package in town, giving himself time to regroup and think about how he could still keep Clark on board but make Clark just a bit less ready, willing, and able. In the heat of the summer, and at Lex’s insistence that they could certainly adopt a business casual dress code considering it was just the two of them, Clark had begun to wear dressy khakis that made the most enticing whispering sound as he walked around the mansion and transported boxes of files. And then there were the short-sleeved button-ups that Martha must have purchased for Clark all at once, each one a slight variation in color and pattern from the last. Lex had to leave off wearing his tailored jackets and switch to an even lighter weight of silk shirts because of the way the muscles in Clark’s bared arms bunched and flexed when Clark reached to answer the phone.

Much as he enjoyed Clark’s company, then, the few hours he would have on his own this afternoon would be most --

“Here you go,” Clark announced, depositing the package on Lex’s desk. His face was flushed and his dark hair curled around his face, framing his cheekbones to perfection. “Wow, it’s getting kind of bad out there.”

“Is it?” Lex shook himself out of his daze at seeing Clark return so soon and glanced out the windows. Raindrops were pelting the glass, and from the looks of the surrounding trees and grass, it had been pouring for some time. But when his gaze shifted back, however, Clark was undeniably bone-dry. “Clark, you’re not wet.”

Clark laughed uncomfortably. “I guess I kind of ran in between the raindrops.”

“Ah,” Lex said, trying to remain calm as he caught a glimpse of the clock on the wall. The trip to town and back that should have taken Clark at least two hours had been dispatched in less than twenty minutes.

“Took you under half an hour,” Lex said in a flat voice.

“There was a line,” Clark said apologetically.

* * *

“There you are,” Clark announced as he entered Lex’s arms and armory room.

Lex tried not to cringe visibly where he sat in his throne like chair. Much as he’d wanted Clark in sight for every minute of these six weeks, it was alarming the way he couldn’t seem to shake Clark even for a moment. With the tenure of Clark’s internship well into the fourth week, Lex had learned that Clark could find him in a matter of seconds even when he was quite sure he hadn’t told Clark where he was going, or even when he knew Clark wasn’t familiar with the particular area of the mansion. It was almost as though Clark had some special vision that let him see through walls. Clark’s cheery “There you are!” had become a familiar phrase that echoed through Lex’s head even when Clark had gone home for the evening.

“Clark,” Lex said, attempting a diffident tone. It was hard to cover up jumping into the air at the shock of being discovered, but then he’d had practice.

“You said you wanted those numbers,” Clark explained as he held out a printout.

“Yes, I did,” Lex murmured. He scanned the sheet and looked up. “Well, you’ve really outdone yourself, Clark. You’ve finished this in half the time I thought it would take, and it looks like you’ve uncovered some critical results.”

“Thanks.” Clark lowered his gaze, a blush suffusing his cheeks.

“So you can go home for the day,” Lex finished, setting aside the paper.

Clark’s face fell. “What?”

“Go home,” Lex said gently. “You’ve been working so hard, and accomplishing so much. I think you’ve more than earned an afternoon off.”

“But . . . ” Clark looked almost panicked. “I was going to finish making those calls, and researching that information you wanted.”

“Tomorrow will be soon enough,” Lex assured him.

Clark’s expression was troubled as he edged reluctantly towards the door. “But . . . I’m doing a good job, though, right? You’re not trying to get rid of me because I’m messing up, are you?”

“Almost too good,” Lex said wryly. “Clark, I know you want to do well at this internship, and believe me, you’ve impressed me so much that --”

“I’ve impressed you?” Clark asked in a low voice.

“You might say ‘stunned’,” Lex clarified.

Clark kept his eyes on his hands as he spoke quietly. “I know that maybe I tried too hard with the copying and faxing. And I know that sometimes I wrap up projects before you think I will. I don’t mean to make you have to come up with busy work, or seem calm when I’m freaking you out.” He looked up, and when his eyes met Lex’s there was something heated, even charged, in his glance. “I want to do a good job for _you_ , Lex. This internship . . . I don’t really care about the extra credit. I just thought it would be fun to hang out with you this summer, and help you out with stuff you needed to do.”

Lex rose and walked towards Clark. “Clark, you’ve been an interning dynamo these past few weeks. And you’re telling me that you weren’t even interested in getting credit for all of this?”

Clark just shook his head.

“You’ve been showing up here every day almost half an hour early, bringing me the most ridiculously disgusting coffee drinks that I’ve ever tasted, breaking all of my high-tech office equipment, and pouncing on me every time my back is turned from you for a second, because you want to hang out with me?”

“Yeah,” Clark said hoarsely. “Wait,” he continued after a moment. He took a step towards Lex, then another, and when he spoke again his voice was trembling with uncertainty. “You didn’t like the coffee?”

“I despised the coffee,” Lex said in a near-whisper.

They stared at one another for a moment, and then as if they were lured by the pull of a force far larger than the two of them, they drew together slowly, inexorably.

“Did you really just give the paper jam document one little pull?” Lex mouthed a fraction of an inch away from Clark’s ear.

“There might have been two pulls,” Clark admitted as he shivered.

“And the espresso maker?”

“It wouldn’t steam,” Clark said helplessly. To Lex his voice sounded sweet and smooth as honey.

“What about the fax machine?” Lex’s hands hovered just above Clark’s hipbones.

“Oh, that thing? It just blew up when I looked at it,” Clark replied.

Then Lex was reaching up, threading his fingers into that dark thick hair, even as Clark’s fingers brushed his cheekbones and slid back further to cradle his head. Their lips met softly, brushing back and forth in teasing fulfillment.

Lex swallowed when Clark bent his head and mouthed along the sinews of his offered neck. “Clark . . . I should stop you . . . I shouldn’t be doing this. It’s against every . . . oh god . . . ethical guideline in the intern-supervisor relationship.”

“No it’s not,” Clark mumbled against his skin. His hands found their way inside of Lex’s shirt and stroked the skin on his chest reverently. “It’s just sucking up to the boss.”

*~*~**The End**~*~*


End file.
